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We were leaving the River Niger bridge in Kebbi state and headed along a beautiful road towards Kaoje. At Kaoje this road ended. We found a young student who kindly directed us through the town and onto another tarred road which led to the border of the Republic of Benin. We had a long chat and he explained to me how to get near to the Confluence and then further down south to New Bussa and the Lake Kainji dam. I had a good road map with me but it is such a remote area and there where not many roads or villages marked on my map. We continued on this road and my map reflected a track turning off towards the Confluence at Darana. It took us a while before we found this village but from this village there was no track towards the direction of the Confluence. Eventually two kilometres away at a village called Bakin Ruwa, we found a track leading in the direction of the Confluence.

We spent more than two hours finding this track which turned out to be the correct track, too. We followed this track and approximately 2 km from the Confluence, Udo had his hand that was stretching out of the window, got suddenly struck by something at the tip of his little finger. He looked to be in a very serious pain and his little finger started swelling there, and then, there were also two marks on his finger. Udo opened these marks and sucked out what ever was in it. We had several conjectures on what might have been the cause, from thorns, to a bee's sting, and even a snake bite, the imaginations were running wild. The finger stayed swollen and pain ridden for a couple of days before it got better. Upon our return Udo went to the doctor who confirmed that it was a snake bite. For certain we never would have known?

We continued along the track and managed to get as close as 650 meters on it. The remaining distance to the Confluence was a nice stroll through the bush. We spent only as much time as we needed to record the Confluence, since Udo was very much in pain. We returned to the place where we parked the vehicles and had a rest. It was a nice place and we had split opinions whether to put up camp or not. It turned out to be our luck that we decided to continue, since a couple of kilometres further along, we entered a small village that was observing its market day. It was here that we saw for the first time Kambali girls in their festive makeup. These girls were very shy but with a bit of passion we managed to get some good photos.

It was a very interesting place and we would have liked to stay on longer but it got late and we still had to look for a place to put up the camp. We drove a couple of kilometres out of this village and set up camp right next to the track.